In New York

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of

There is nothing that you can't do

Now you're in New York

These streets will make you feel brand new

Big lights will inspire you

Let's here it for New York, New York, New York

——<Empire State of the Mind>

Before I came to America, New York was just like the Statue of the Liberty. It was more a song, a mark than a city where there were real people, not movie star, living in. It stand still at the other side of the earth showing her beauty to the world, everyone has heard about it but few of them really knew it. Even at the moment I arrived at New York, it didn't occurred to me that I would spend some wonderful time in New York in my best 20s.

New York is just like a classic movie you have never watched, you keep hearing stories about her, result in a vague concept along with some wild imagination. I naturally had an impression that most stories in New York was like what we saw in Gossip Girl, or Maid in Manhattan：All about fashion, about high-scale bars or romantic love. So you can imagine how disappointed my friends and I were when we saw the terrible physical appearance the subway stations there. The trains were like 500 hundred years old, carrying various passengers and countless germs. However, now I understand that instead of modern technologies or magnificent buildings, there is very little you can not experience or buy in New York. When we was going to take the subway in the 342 times on the third day,a group of people holding some advanced cameras stopped us, wanted to shoot us, four young Asian girls, in the subway station. They were collecting contacts  between individuals and subways in the form of videos. We agreed and acted super cooperative, partly because they appeared to be professional, also we were excited being shooting. That's the moment I began to believe New York was a unique city that reveals surprises around every corner.

I think the time I realized I was in the entertainment capital of the world was when the Statue of the Liberty entered my eyes. I was really exhilarated about the sudden appearance of the open view in the concrete jungle. Although I had seen the statue on TV or magazines for many times, none of those could compete the real one.

We stayed there for almost five days, long enough to visit all the major landmarks. However, our unfamiliarity with the city made our trip a little ineffective. Except for the Art museum, we didn't have a chance for any other museum. Sun, one of the girls, felt especially pity about failing to explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What did we all felt pity? It's the shopping part! The time square should have played a big role in this part, it turned out we spent most of time at the disney store. It was not because we loved Disney that much, it was because we didn't feel like very much to shop clothes when the most conspicuous stores were still those stores we could see anywhere else, Forever 21, H&M, Sephora and so on. We did buy something at TOPSHOP, but we didn't expect just for 'something', we wanted non-stop shopping with tough choice between the red one or the blue one, the big one or the small one. In reality, we were not interested in the cheap one and could not afford the expensive one.

Another famous place we visited was a restaurant. And it was not an upscale restaurant, it was a small Japanese restaurant, getting its reputation for its location at NYU. A friend of Tina, another girl in our group, took us to go sightseeing his university, NYU for a while. He got to knew the fact that Tina was in New York from her post on Facebook about the NBA game we were watching the night before. By the way, there was nothing worth talking about the game except for the famous Garden. Back to the restaurant, I have already forgotten how was the food tasted, but I would always remember the exotic decoration, pictures of naked bodies with bold Japanese characters. It's for both visual and spiritual impulse. Another good proof for one thing, in New York, being special rather than rich makes you outstanding. 

What made my personal staying in New York was my host family, which I found on Airbnb. She was one of the hundreds of African American immegrants. Every night when both of us was at home, she would initially ask me how the day was and strike a lovely conversation. I liked her so much that I left one cute suvernior for her, which made her really exhilarant. Her life and her not big but cozy house allowed me to see the positive part of living in such a giant concrete jungle.

I suddenly realized the New York trip was full of female elements, literally a girls' trip. I owe the gratitude to the wonderful girls I stayed with in New York. It's them who made the trip so memorable for me. Even we may be remote again when we meet each other, I think what matters was those happy hours we spent together in a special space.